This will be the last notice in this column promoting next Saturday’s “Support Our Troops Fundraiser” Spaghetti Dinner and Raffle.

It will be at the Red Bluff Veterans Hall at 735 Oak St, and if past dinners are a guide, you’ll get all you can eat of some of the best spaghetti, salad and garlic bread to be had in town, all under the watchful eye of expert chef, Mr. Brian Spainhower, of Brian’s Place.

Dinner starts at 5:30, then raffles, door prizes, and it’s not over until you’ve had some delicious cake, tea or coffee. Save a little money and get your tickets in advance, for $8, at the Corning or Red Bluff branches of Butte Community Bank, or call Beth or Bob Chaney, 529-2416, or Chuck or Kathy Peters, 529-1852. This info will be part of my column in the online version of the Daily News all week.

The proceeds benefit our local “Military Family Support Group of Tehama County,” a group we can all get enthusiastic about, no matter our positions on the Iraq or Afghanistan wars. At past dinners, I’ve seen Republicans, Democrats, Independents, Libertarians of all stripes, coming together over a cause that transcends politics ? doing what we can to show our support for our local young people and their families, as they endure the sacrifices of deployment.

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What do tulips, emu eggs, high tech stocks and our housing market have in common? They have all been subject to speculative price “bubbles” based on hysteria and greed. The original “tulip mania” of centuries-ago Holland is the classic: People started buying and selling tulip bulbs based not their intrinsic value to make a beautiful flower, but simply to resell them at a profit to someone who likewise figured on doing the same. The power of inflated expectations and greed drove the price up and up, until the inevitable crash occurred.

More recently, we had a similar “speculative bubble” over the humble emu egg. Of course they have some intrinsic value when the emu that hatches from them grows and provides emu meat that one can sell. “Hype” springs eternal, however. The eggs sold for ever-more inflated prices as the expectation built that a growing demand for the meat would make the final owners of the eggs a rather large profit. Didn’t work out quite like that.

A recent recession followed from a similar “speculative bubble” over technology stocks. Many economic downturns have likewise followed from such unrealistically rising stock prices that, like the tulips and emu eggs, were driven by expectations of tremendous profit. No, people bought and sold technology stocks based on the price having gone up, and expecting it to continue ever-upward “to infinity and beyond” (apologies to Buzz Lightyear).

Contributing to the mania, of course, was the availability of “credit” in the form of “margin accounts” which allowed someone to borrow most of the money needed ? what’s the risk, they thought? When prices, and expectations, came down to earth, and the masses of investors began licking their financial wounds, a collective “what were we thinking?” rose up. The “risks” of investing rise as the prices cease reflecting actual value based on profit from the sale of a good or service. That’s when greed takes over ? the emotional desire to get more than you deserve.

This brings us to the current “housing crisis” which has much in common with previous “speculative bubbles.” I saw some trends in the real estate market that struck me as odd, even unsustainable. We all saw the nightly news segments on investors “flipping” homes, condo’s, apartments, etc. Florida high-rises were a perfect example of people engaged in “high-flying” financial transactions, meant to hold a condo under construction, never intending to actually live there, only to turn around and sell it to the next “dollar-sign-filled-eyes” to come along, who expected to find another “investor” willing to pay even more.

Nationwide, almost one out of four homes sold to “non-owner occupants,” some to hold as an investment, but many who immediately looked for someone else to pay even more. Other investors were paying prices for rental properties way beyond what was justified by the likely rental income. Yes, greed played a part in all of this. Even many of the homebuyers talked themselves into payment plans with the expectation that the home would rise in value, beyond its inherent value as a domicile. Lenders, of course, saw the possibility of unrealistic profit to be had as more and more borrowers signed up for loans they probably wouldn’t be able to afford.

Politically speaking, this “slowdown” is no more President Bush’s fault, than it was President Clinton’s fault when the “tech bubble” burst.

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In a rare moment of commentator honesty, financial “money honey” Maria Bartoroma said it all: “This may be one of the first cases of people actually talking themselves into a recession.” A brief story will illustrate: Centuries ago in England, the owner of a popular “road house” who saw how his business thrived, commissioned a large painting for his dining hall. The painter was delighted at the prospect and excitedly told his wife. She’d been hearing all sorts of gossip at the laundry facility about how an economic downturn was just ahead. She told everyone she met how her painter-husband had been hired for this painting and how it would insulate them from the coming economic decline.

This gossip spread, turned into concern, which took on the aspect of self-fulfilling prophecy as the wife of the “road house” owner rushed home to tell her husband that everyone expected an economic downturn. When the owner next met the painter to finalize the commission, his unease got the better of him as he explained to the struggling painter that the economy was just too uncertain to hire him for a grand painting ? maybe when things were looking a little more economically favorable.

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Don Polson has called Red Bluff home since 1988, is a past president of the Tehama County Association of Realtors and is a licensed Realtor. His column runs Monday. He can be reached by e-mail atdonplsn@yahoo.com